Lómelindi
by Losseniaiel
Summary: A reunion in Valinor, beyond all hope.


**Lómelindi**

Disclaimers: This world and its inhabitants belong to J.R.R. Tolkien and his estate. I own nothing, intend no infringement of copyright, and am making no money from this.

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Rating: PG.

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Summary: A reunion in Valinor, beyond all hope.

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Feedback is more wonderful than I can possibly describe.

Thanks to **Isis** for betaing this. *hugs* as ever.

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY **Lalaith** – and I apologise for it being so belated.

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He came down into the valley with the dawning of the day, down into the narrow cleft in the rolling hills, down into the gardens shadowed by pale mist, touched with shades of silver and scarlet. The birds silenced at his coming, their first song of the day dying without voice, as if some long-forgotten enchantment had been laid upon them, binding them to the stillness which he bore around him as another might wear a cloak.

For indeed he wore naught but simple linens, his feet bare on the rutted track, his hair unbound and dampened by the dew. No mount he had, nor party of companions to cheer his journey onwards to its ending. Alone he stood, as still as the mountains, gazing down upon the scarce-lit valley beneath his feet. Alone, and more than alone, for although he seemed yet young as the new-fledged year, sorrows as old as the wending of time marred the clarity of his wandering gaze, and a fear which set him apart from the beauty of the morning. His hands, long-fingered and gentle with no warrior's calluses upon their palms, shook as if a deathly palsy had taken him, belying the immortality of his slender frame.

He swallowed, once, twice, and followed the curling path downwards as a gull rides the curve of a wave, not knowing whence it shall take him, to ruin or to rapture, borne ever onwards upon the foaming crest of a destiny he cannot see and dares not face. The soft earth was cool beneath his feet, soft and damp, exuding the faint aroma of decay, of the autumn which was past, and he thought again of other woods , as he had so many times in his long journeying, of the damp loam of leaves under other skies ere the Sun and the Moon. But he set his back to the East and smiled at the last stars fading from the sky before him, his wearied feet negotiating the winter's cracks and ruts.

The path opened into a clearing, bordered on both sides by elm trees that bent their branches to the path in long sweeps of pale green, as if to embrace the traveller in welcome. In the pools of faint light that filtered between the spring's new leaves, he beheld the first scattering of wild flowers, daisies with their heads tightly closed against the night, bluebells and primroses in a riot of colour, which seemed to defy the drab fear shining in his caution-gilded eyes, slowing his steps and his heart as one.

He thought once again how odd it was that his heart should beat at all with none to sustain it through the enveloping darkness, the binding music of sorrow which caught and captured his soul. But for all that, he knelt in the dew, in the sheltered glade deep in the valley, with the rays of dawn falling upon his silver head, and he gathered up the flowers into his arms, as a people to their sovereign lord, and made of them two garlands, two crowns of the splendour of the spring, and of the morning, as if in the hope that thus it would never fade, nor fall into ruin and desolation. One he placed upon his brow, verdant against the pallor of his skin, and the other he held in both his hands, inhaling deeply of the fragrance of the flowers mingled with the sweet sourness of the earth.

And he rose, and saw her, as he half knew he would, standing beneath the arching heaven of a bower he had not seen until that moment, hidden as it was – or seemed to be – by the thick growth of the trees by whose roots it stood, a pair of _malinornë_ in the youth of their mighty days. The ground about them was carpeted with _elanor_ and _niphredil_, growing so thickly he could not see the earth beneath them. Her face was radiant, even turned from him as it was, the first light on the flowers reflected in the brilliance of her eyes. Her hair cascaded down the line of her back in a single braid, woven about with yet more of the blooms, luminous against its darkness.

And yet it seemed to him, waiting before her for the first time in years beyond count, that she who stood there was not truly in his sight, nor in the compass and span of his yearning heart. He could see the morn's dappled light, fading from scarlet through rich amber to the soft shade of newly churned butter, glistening through the fabric of her dress and the skin of her high cheeks, as a lamp shines through the glass which shields it. And when her voice came to him, it was as the whispering breath of the wind on a calm day in high summer. 

His eyes dropped, and his hands fell to his sides, heedless of their delicate burden. A sob rose in his chest, all unbidden, choking the very air from his lungs.

"Good day, my lady." He bowed deeply, his hair sweeping the tips of his filthy toes, its bright strands blurred before his eyes by the tears he would not shed, for a life he could not forget.

"A fine day in early spring for such wanderings, child." She smiled gently, and it was not the smile of a lover, nor of a friend, but of a being clothed in flesh divine, parted forever from the tawdry earth.

"Indeed it is." The words which issued forth from his mouth were not his own, nor did he know how they came to be there.

For a bitter moment, they stood in silence, her eyes fixed upon the morning, and his upon her. He felt compelled to speak, but he knew not how he could, how he could escape the chill caverns of death back into the brightness of the day, and the familiar warded prison of words.

"What brings you hither, pilgrim? For what purpose do you journey so far over hill and dale, bare of foot, to seek the gardens of Lórien?" she asked, her voice falling hollow in the silence of the grove.

"I came seeking that which is lost, and ever shall be." The blood on his tongue tasted of the drawn sword, and of the salt of the seas, but the sick numbness gathering behind his eyes tasted only of the Void, and of the dying of the days.

"Even in Lórien such things are not to be found by those who would come upon them all unawares."

"This I know now, here at the ending of my hopes beneath the Sun and the Moon, and the ancient stars." He could not breathe; he could not see, and it was as well, for he could not have borne to look upon the kind stranger standing before him. "_Mornie utúlië_. My darkness has fallen upon me at last, _vessënya_, and I am repaid in kind for all my fell deeds." Yet even as he spoke the words of the tongue he had long denied, the _Lómelindi _joined his voice with theirs in fabled song, reechoing about him in sweet whispers, silvering the trees and the very vaults of the skies with the notes of their long lament. Bright were their voices on that morn, brighter than the rising sun, and sweet was the melody which they wrought from the clear air, taking wing about the hidden glade in the deep valley on the borders of Lórien.

When at last they ceased their song, the green light was deeper yet, tinted with the power of the full morning, haunted by the certainty of the sun as it rose towards the noon. And there were tears in her eyes, and the sunlight glanced off the thick fall of her ebon hair, shaping a solid form where once there had been but free air.

And yet he did not see, for he found he could no more raise his eyes than he could move the world with a thought.

She came to stand before him, and took the garland from his hands, and placed it upon her own head. Tears fell in abundance from her eyes, yet the hand she slipped beneath his chin neither shook nor trembled.

"Look upon me."

And he did, and she smiled through her tears to see that face again, even as she had not permitted to herself until that moment. "Could not you have gone shod for such a journey, Elwë-nín?"

Surely there could be no more wonder in any dawning than there was in his face at that moment, as he looked upon her once more in the true light of the day.

"Nay, meleth-nín, for I could scarce wait to be gone from the city and come unto the place of your abiding." He ran a wondering hand over her hair, and together they fell into the sweet grass and the sweeter flowers, and it was a long time before words again became necessary.

FINIS

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meleth-nín – my love.

Elwë-nín – my Elwë.

Lómelindi – nightingales.

Mornie utúlië – darkness has come.

Vessënya – my wife.


End file.
